Charting programs (such as spreadsheet application programs, word processing application programs, and presentation application programs) enable the creation of charts of various types from user provided data. Typically, charting programs generate charts having a fixed layout in which chart elements (e.g., titles, legends, plot area, etc.) are arranged according to a predefined format. Many users, however wish to retain some control of the layout of chart elements so that they have some control over the placement of these elements in order to effect the overall appearance of the chart, to conform to a presentation standard, or to emphasize a particular detail presented in the chart.
To that end, some charting programs have been developed which allow a user to change the location of certain chart elements by hand (i.e., manual layout). However, these charting programs fail to provide any assistance to the user to find appropriate locations for the remaining elements. For instance, a user may reposition and/or resize a legend in a bar chart while other elements automatically generated by the charting program (such as the plot area) remain unchanged. Furthermore, in current charting programs, a repositioned and/or resized chart element creates free space in the chart corresponding to the previous position of the element. In response to the free space created by the manual layout of chart elements, current charting programs expand the plot area of the chart to take up the free space created by manual layout elements. However, these methods often result in an unacceptable visual layout when the manual elements are laid out along with automatically positioned elements by the charting program.
It is with respect to these considerations and others that the various embodiments of the present invention have been made.